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KIGALI, June 3 (AFP) - The police killing of an opposition activist sparked riots in the south Rwandan town of Kigembe on Wednesday, but looting by demobilized troops in other areas appeared to be over.
Several houses were burned in Kigembe after police killed a member of the main opposition Democratic Republican Movement (MDR), a well-informed source here said.
Meanwhile, security forces have arrested 23 soldiers involved in looting branches of the Commercial Bank of Rwanda and the Savings Bank in Kibuye in the west of the country on Monday, prime ministerial spokesman Francois Nsengiyunva said.
Six million of 16 million stolen Rwandan francs (about 130,000 dollars) were recovered, he added.
At the weekend, troops ending their military service went on the rampage in the northwestern Ruhengeri and Gisenyi districts, killing about 30 people.
The small highland nation in east central Africa has frequently been torn by strife between the majority Hutus and Tutsi people, who were in the past the traditional rulers.
The army cracked down on Tutsis after the Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR), composed mainly of Tutsi exiles who had served in the Ugandan army, launched an insurrection in northern Rwanda in October 1990.
Rwanda's new national unity government, led by opposition leader Dismas Nsengiyaremye as part of a transition from military dictatorship to multi-party democracy, is due Friday to begin peace talks with the FPR and the opposition in Paris.
Opposition parties and the FPR guerrilla front met in Brussels at the weekend and said in a joint statement that President Juvenal Habyarimana must be "forced to leave".
They accused the "terrorist regime" of retired General Habyarimana, who took power in 1975, of "seeking to destabilise the transitional government and above all to block the peace and democracy process".
Since March, a spate of unclaimed bomb attacks has killed and wounded dozens of people in Rwanda. The opposition has accused the regime of seeking to spread "insecurity" and undermine the government.
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